Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 14 and 18 together. The questions are about how the visit of Commissioner Maria Damanaki went when she visited this country several weeks ago. I thank the Commissioner for coming. I invited her to come several months ago. I also invited our Commissioner, Mrs. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn to visit.

For Commissioner Damanaki's visit I had two purposes in mind; to visit the Marine Institute in Galway to see the extraordinary work it is doing and to allow her to have detailed discussions with me, the fishing industry and NGOs to give an understanding on her perspective on the Common Fisheries Policy and what she wanted to achieve.

In the meeting I used the opportunity to map out in detail why this country feels vulnerable when we look at her approach towards the transferability of fishing concessions or quotas, which essentially means the privatisation of quotas. I reminded her that we support in principle what she wants to do on discards but we think her approach needs to be much more targeted to work with the industry. We had a good discussion. I am confident that when she left she had a much better understanding of Ireland-specific issues.

The reality is that we only catch 18% of the fish in Irish waters. That is the full scope of the EU waters for which this country has responsibility. That puts us in a very unusual position whereby we have large Spanish and French fishing fleets in particular fishing in Irish waters which would like to get their hands on Irish quota if they could. I have explained why I am uncomfortable with the concept of moving away from a quota being treated as a national asset which is then allocated to boats in the Irish fleet in a way that keeps the fleet commercially viable to a system whereby boats could trade quotas among themselves which will result in consolidation and many fewer fishing ports here.

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